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'AR INFORMATION SERIES 




No. 14 # March, 1918 




• 

THE WAR FOR 




PEACE 


» 


THE PRESENT WAR 
AS VIEWED BY FRIENDS OF PEACE . 




COMPILED BY 

ARTHUR D. CALL 

Secretary of the American Peace Society and Editor o£' 
" The Advocate of Peace" 



PUBLISHED BY 

THE. COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC INFORMATION 

WASHINGTON, D. C. 









SG-.J 



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CONTENTS 



I . The American Peace Society — 

Editorial: "Win and End the War" 5 

Brief extracts 7 

II. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace — 

Minute of November 1, 1917 9 

III. The League to Enforce Peace — 

Official statement 11 

IV. The American School Peace League — 

Official statement 14 

V. The World Peace Foundation — 

Official statement 16 

VI. Women Peace Workers — 

Statement of various leaders, December 29, 1917 17 

VII. The Churches — 

American Branch of the World Alliance for Promoting Inter- 
national Friendship through the Churches 19 

Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America 20 

VIII. Relief Workers in Belgium — 

Cablegram to President Wilson from Herbert C. Hoover, 
Chairman of the American Commission for Relief in 

Belgium, April 3, 1917 23 

Vernon Kellogg, in Atlantic Monthly for August, 1917 23 

IX. Clarence Darrow, of Chicago — 

From an address published in The Santa Fe Magazine, De- 
cember, 1917 24 

X. William Howard Taft — 

From an address before the General Conference of the Uni- 
tarian and other Christian Churches at Montreal, Septem- 
ber 26, 1917 28 

XI. William Jennings Bryan — 

Editorials from The Commoner: 

"Resisting the Draft" 35 

"Abusing Free Speech" 35 

"Write to Washington" 36 

"Stand by the Government" 36 

"A Powerful Document" 37 

XII. Theodore Marburg, of Baltimore — 

From an article in The Humanitarian, December, 1917 39 

XIII. Samuel Gompers — 

Upon accepting the presidency of the American Alliance for 
Labor and Democracy 41 



"Between a worthy War-patriotism and a virile Peace-patriotism 
there is no essential difference." — (Louis F. Post, in The Public f 
December 14, 1917.) 

"Now that we are in the War the shortest way out is Forward."— 
David Starr Jordan. 



I. The American Peace Society 

The American Peace Society is America's oldest peace organization — dating 
back to 1815, definitely organized in 1828, and incorporated under the laws 
of Massachusetts in 1848. It enrolled among its officers and members a 
large proportion of the men who built up the ideals and institutions of our 
nineteenth century period. Since 1911, its headquarters have been in Wash- 
ington, D. C. It publishes a monthly magazine, the Advocate of Peace, 
which has been published regularly for eighty years. The present officers of 
the Society are: President, Hon. James L. Slay den, House of Representatives, 
Washington, D. C; Secretary, Arthur Deerin Call, Colorado Building, 
Washington, D. C; Treasurer, George W. White, President National Metro- 
politan Bank, Washington, D. C; Vice-Presidents, Jackson H. Ralston, 
Washington, D. C; Theodore E. Burton, New York City; Andrew Carnegie, 
New York City; William Jennings Bryan, Lincoln, Neb.; William H. Taft, 
New Haven, Conn. 

The leading editorial in the Advocate of Peace for December, 1917, follows: 

WIN AND END THE WAR 

This is no time for darkening counsel by words. Since it is 
true that in time of irreconcilable conflict in welfares the lesser 
must succumb to the greater; since it is true that we are now 
faced with an irreconcilable conflict between the will to might of 
the German Government and the will to right of the United 
States; since we believe it to be true that there is therefore an 
irreconcilable conflict between the welfare of kings and the 
welfare of peoples; since it is true, as we believe, that a tri- 
umphant Germany would now destroy every hope we have for a 
world governed by justice, and that what we mean by civiliza- 
tion is therefore hanging at this hour in the balance; since it is 
true that our country is, by the vote of our representatives duly 
elected, at war with the Imperial German Government that 
that civilization may be; since it is true that our boys are now 
by the thousands on the firing lines of France and that they are 
already dying there for us; since it is true that our lawfully 
created representatives are, at our bidding, bending every effort 
to bring the German Government to terms and to end the destruc- 
tion; since these things are true, terribly true, this certainly is 
no time for a loyalty of squinting constructions, or for behavior 
of a doubtful sort on the part of any one within the United 
States. Now of all times in our history is the time for confining 
ourselves "within the modest limits of order." 

5 



6 THE WAR FOR PEACE 

We must believe in law. Without law there is chaos. Law 
is the instrument by which the majority, individually weak 
and right-minded, control the few individually aggressive and 
criminal. Where there is no law, might and cunning prevail. 
Laws are rules of conduct which we are all morally bound to 
obey. If we will to live within the United States we by that 
act tacitly agree to obey the laws of the United States. 

If we give "aid and comfort" to Germany in these times, we 
disobey the most fundamental law of our land. When our 
chosen leaders are, in accordance with the law, bending every 
effort to bring the German Government to terms, for any of us 
to harass these our representatives in authority is to stir up the 
dust, befog the issues, prolong the horror, give encouragement to 
Germany, do violence to law, and toy with treason. 

We state these elementary principles here, not because we 
are interested in principles merely, but because many radical 
persons, commonly called "pacifists," ignore these principles to 
the embarrassing detriment of the very thing they and we be- 
lieve in and would advance. The" so-called People's Council is 
made up largely of just such deluded persons. What has been 
known for a time as the American Union Against Militarism 
has, we are informed, changed its name to American Union for 
a Democratic Peace, and its members are now evidently applying 
essentially the same obscurantist and disturbing methods as the 
People's Council. These perfectly sincere "radicals" are raising 
the dust, getting nowhere, bringing upon themselves the con- 
tempt of healthy-minded men, and by their stupid proceedings 
rendering a serious injury to the cause of international peace. 
For any body of intelligent persons to organize themselves and 
to say as a body at this time, "We are utterly opposed to the 
extension of militarism in this country," would be laughable 
were it not so counter to the law as it is, treasonable in substance 
and tragical. The job of the hour has nothing to do with "an- 
nexations," "indemnities," "economic reprisals," unofficial 
"German peace proposals." To blur our thinking with such 
matters at this time is to distort our perspective, to give comfort 
to our enemies, and to prolong the war. The supreme duty of 
every man, woman, and child in America today is, avoiding 
panics and hatreds of persons, to remember the ghastly offenses 



THE WAR FOR PEACE 7 

of a might-worshipping aggressor, and to bend every possible 
effort to win and to end this war. 

When they ask us of this Society, as frequently they do, how 
we can "support war with one hand and peace with the other," 
we reply by pointing to our well-nigh hundred years of con- 
sistent effort in behalf of a reign of law. We cannot now turn 
against the only law we have left. We must and will support 
the only machinery we have for the maintenance of that law, 
namely, the United States Government. If some member of the 
People's Council pathetically asks us, as one recently did, "Who, 
then, is to represent the people?" our reply must be that we can 
recognize but one "representative of the people" today, and 
that is not the People's Council, but the Government duly elected 
and sworn to do precisely that thing. 

At eighteen minutes past one o'clock, Friday, April 6, 1917, 
something happened in the world. On that day and hour the 
President of the United States signed a resolution which had 
been passed by both houses of the Congress, a resolution which 
officially declared the state of war which had been thrust upon 
this country. This momentous act altered completely the bases 
upon which we fashioned our daily behavior prior to that action. 
rt seems difficult for many to grasp this fact, but it is a fact 
which must be grasped. With the situation as it is, there can 
be no governed world of the kind that rational men would have. 
Judicial processes are at the time internationally impossible. 
The methods of peaceable settlement must wait, because there 
in the way of these things stands the Imperial German Govern- 
ment. To go back now would be disastrous. The only way 
to the attainment of our aims is forward. Law, justice, common 
sense, the world peace we purpose to establish, all call now for a 
perfect unity of opinion and purpose, a call which should and 
must be heard by us all, whether we are members of this or that 
"group" or of no group at all. The clarion, unmistakable call 
to us all is, that we must now end this war by winning it. 

The following extracts are from editorials in the issue for January, 1918: 

. . . "The voices of humanity," to which the President 
referred in his message of December 4, are against such conquests 
as they are against the cut-throat theory of economic warfare 
typified by the proposals of the Economic Congress in Paris. 



8 THE WAR FOR PEACE 

It is true that "the voices of humanity" are in the air. It is true 
that "they grow daily more audible, more articulate, more 
persuasive, and they come from the hearts of men everywhere. 
They insist that the war shall not end in vindictive action of 
any kind; that no nation or people shall be robbed or punished 
because the irresponsible rulers of a single country have themselves 
done deep and abominable wrong." It is this thought that has 
been expressed in the formula, "no accessions, no contributions, 
no punitive indemnities." The attempt to end the war by acces- 
sions and punitive indemnities would not end the war, but prolong 
the war, or at least establish a temporary peace which would 
be but the forerunner of another and probably more terrible 

war. . . . 

... We cannot win this war by any inconclusive, fragile, 

or patched-up peace. The peace of exultation of the strong over 

the weak, of exploitation and of revenge, of mere compromise, 

of secret diplomacy or intrigue, of a subjection of small nations 

against their will, of greed and selfishness, or of any dicker with 

German war-lords would be no peace at all. 

It is certain that we of America are now at war with the 
Imperial German Government and with Austria-Hungary. All 
our resources are at the command of the Government, and we 
purpose to end this war by winning it. No one can mistake the 
military outcome. We shall bring the Imperial German Govern- 
ment to terms. Of this there is no doubt whatsoever. But all 
this could be done and the war in reality be lost. A nominal mili- 
tary victory can easily be turned into a defeat gruesome and ca- 
lamitous. But if we clarify our principles and become "debased 
by no selfish ambition of conquest or spoliation"; if we keep 
prominently before us our "principles of humanity and of knightly 
honor"; if we refuse to take part in "intrigue"; if we keep always 
in mind not only the welfare of ourselves but of our enemies; 
if we view our cause as just and holy and make it both; if we 
crystallize our thinking upon the ancient rights and duties of 
nations, . . . we as a nation shall rise to our opportunity, 
to the clear heights of God's "own justice and mercy," and win 
the war indeed. 



II. Carnegie Endowment for International 

Peace 

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace was founded by Mr. 
Andrew Carnegie, December 14, 1910. Mr. Carnegie created a Board of 
Trustees to whom he transferred $10,000,000, the revenue of which is ad- 
ministered for hastening the abolition of international war. The Trustees for 
1917 were: President, Elihu Root; Vice-President, the late Joseph H. Choate; 
Secretary, James Brown Scott; Treasurer, Charlemagne Tower; Assistant 
Treasurer, Andrew J. Montague; Robert Bacon, Robert S. Brookings, 
Thomas Burke, Nicholas Murray Butler, Cleveland H. Dodge, Charles 
W. Eliot, Arthur William Foster, John W. Foster, Austen G. Fox, 
Robert A. Franks, George Gray, William M. Howard, Samuel Mather, 
George W. Perkins, Henry S. Pritchett, Jacob G. Schmidlapp, James L. 
Slayden, Oscar S. Straus, Charles L. Taylor, Andrew D. White, John Sharp 
Williams, Robert S. Woodward. James Brown Scott, Secretary of the En- 
dowment, is now serving the Government in the capacity of Major and Judge 
Advocate, United States Reserves in Active Service, and has been detailed 
to the office of Provost-Marshal General Crowder. 

The following minute is self-explanatory: 

Information has reached this country that a persistent propa- 
ganda is in progress in Germany, to the effect that under the 
stimulus and direction of peace organizations in the United 
States a widespread movement for immediate peace is going 
on here. In view of this information, the Executive Committee 
of the Carnegie Endowment, at a meeting in New York on 
November 1st [1917], unanimously adopted the following resolu- 
tion, which was subsequently cabled to all the countries of the 
world : 

"The Trustees of the Carnegie Endowment for International 
Peace, assembled in annual meeting at Washington, D. C, 
on April 19-20 last, adopted the following resolution by unani- 
mous vote: 

Resolved, That the Trustees of the Carnegie Endowment for Inter- 
national Peace, assembled for their annual meeting, declare hereby their 
belief that the most effectual means of promoting durable international 
peace is to prosecute the war against the Imperial German Government 
to final victory for democracy, in accordance with the policy declared by 
the President of the United States. 

9 



10 THE WAR FOR PEACE 

"In view of recent events, emphasized by the widespread 
intrigues of the German Government to deceive and mislead 
the peace-loving people of the world, the Executive Committee 
of the Peace Endowment unanimously reaffirms this declaration 
and pledges the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 
to the loyal support of those courses of action that will assure 
early, complete, and final victory for the arms of the Allied 
forces. The path to durable international peace, on which the 
liberty-loving nations of the world would so gladly enter, is now 
blocked by the blind reliance of Germany upon the invincibility 
of German military power and upon its effectiveness as an instru- 
ment of international policy. This reliance must be broken 
before any other effective steps can be taken to secure inter- 
national peace. It can only be broken by defeat. 

"The Executive Committee of the Carnegie Endowment call 
upon all lovers of peace to assist in every possible way in the 
effective prosecution of the war which has peace and not con- 
quest for its aim." 



III. League to Enforce Peace 

The League to Enforce Peace was organized in Philadelphia, June 17, 
1915. It proposes that a League of Nations be created at the end of the 
present war for the purpose of setting up a Judicial Tribunal and a Council 
of Conciliation, and of using jointly economic and military force against any 
nation belonging to the League that goes to war without first placing the 
questions involved either before the Court or Council of Conciliation. It 
proposes, finally, that Conferences shall be held from time to time for the 
purpose of formulating and codifying rules of international law. The head- 
quarters of the League are at 70 Fifth Avenue, New York City. Its officers 
are: William H. Taft, President; Alton B. Parker, Vice-President; Herbert S. 
Houston, Treasurer; William II. Short, Secretary; Irwin Smith, Assistant 
Secretary and Treasurer; Executive Committee, A. Lawrence Lowell, Chair- 
man; Hamilton Holt, Theodore Marburg, Edward A. Filene, Vice-Chairmen . 

The League's relation to the present war has been set forth officially as 
follows: 

The League to Enforce Peace is committed in advance to the 
support of the war against Prussian Militarism. In June, 1915, 
it put forth a series of proposals advocating a permanent League 
of Nations, pledged to joint military action against an aggressive 
nation that refused to submit its dispute to arbitration. This 
policy the League has been urging steadily ever since. The 
United States has now become a member of what Secretary of 
War Baker has called "a league to enforce peace with justice." 
We are engaged with our allies in precisely the kind of a war 
the League's program holds to be both justifiable and neces- 
sary. Having advanced the principle of joint action against 
an aggressor, the League is bound to throw its moral support 
behind the war, and to give it all the material support that its 
widespread and powerful organization can contribute. An organi- 
zation so committed cannot do other than to insist that the war 
shall continue until Prussian Militarism is destroyed, either by 
Allied force or by the uprising of a German democracy, and a 
league of nations is established as a guaranty of permanent peace. 

The supreme task before the country is that of conserving 
its life and institutions by winning the war against Prussian 
Militarism. Equally necessary to the interests of humanity is 
the preventing in the future of just such assaults on the rights 

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12 THE WAR FOR PEACE 

and liberties of the world as Germany is now making, thus 
rendering it virtually impossible for such a catastrophe as the 
present war to overwhelm us again. 

The President of the League, Hon. William H. Taft, writes: 

England, France, Russia, Italy, and now the United States, 
as Allies, are engaged in the greatest war of history to secure 
permanent world peace. With twenty or more millions of men 
at the colors, with losses in dead, wounded, and captured of 
more than twenty-five per cent, with debts piling mountain- 
high and reaching many, many billions, they are fighting for a 
definite purpose, and that is the defeat of German militarism. 

If the Prussian military caste retains its power to control the 
military and foreign policy of Germany after the war, peace will 
not be permanent, and war will begin again when the chauvinistic 
advisers of the Hohenzollern dynasty deem a conquest and 
victory possible. 

The Allies have made a stupendous effort and have strained 
their utmost capacity. Unready for the war, they have concen- 
trated their energy in preparation. In this important respect 
they have defeated the plan of Germany "in shining armor" to 
crush her enemies in their unreadiness. 

But the war has not been won. Germany is in possession of 
Belgium and part of northern France. She holds Serbia and 
Roumania, Poland and the Baltic Provinces of Russia. Peace 
now, even though it be made on the basis of the restoration of 
the status quo, "without indemnities and without annexations," 
would be a failure to achieve the great purpose for which the 
Allies have made heartrending sacrifice. Armaments would 
continue for the next war, and this war would have been fought 
in vain. The millions of lives lost and the hundreds of billions' 
worth of the product of men's labor, would be wasted. 

He who proposes peace now, therefore, either does not see the 
stake for which the Allies are fighting, or wishes the German 
military autocracy still to control the destinies of all of us as 
to peace or war. Those who favor permanent world peace must 
oppose with might and main the proposals for peace at this 
juncture in the war. 

The Allies are fighting for a principle the maintenance of which 



THE WAR FOR PEACE 13 

affects the future of civilization. If they do not achieve it they 
have sacrificed the flower of their youth and mortgaged their 
future for a century, and all for nothing. 

This is not a war in which the stake is territory or the sphere 
of influence of one nation over another. The Allies cannot 
concede peace until they conquer it. When they do so, it will 
be permanent. Otherwise they fail. 

There are wars like that between Japan and Russia, in which 
President Roosevelt properly and successfully intervened to bring 
about a peace that helped the parties to a settlement. The prin- 
ciple at stake and the power and territory were of such a char- 
acter that a settlement might be made substantially permanent. 
But the present issue is like that in our Civil War, which was 
whether the Union was to be preserved and the cancer of slavery 
was to be cut out. Peace proposals to President Lincoln were 
quite as numerous as those of to-day, and were moved by quite 
as high motives. But there was no compromise possible. 
Slavery and disunion either lost or won. So today the great 
moral object of the war must be achieved or defeated. 



IV. The American School Peace League 

The headquarters of the American School Peace League are in Boston, and 
its officers for 1916-17 were: Honorary president, William Howard Taft; 
president, Randall J. Condon, Superintendent of Schools, Cincinnati, Ohio; 
treasurer, William W. Andrew, Superintendent of Schools, Salem, Mass.; 
secretary, Mrs. Fannie Fern Andrews; vice-presidents — David Starr Jordan, 
Philander P. Claxton, James H. Van Sickle, William H. Maxwell, BenBlewett, 
Charles E. Chadsey, F. E. Spaulding, Mrs. Mary C. C. Bradford, Miss Mary 
E. Woolley, Endicott Peabody, Miss Jane Addams, S. C. Mitchell, Miss 
Ellen C. Sabin, Mrs. Josephine C. Preston, Joseph Swain, E. C. Warriner, 
L. R. Alderman, Frank B. Cooper. 

The following is an official statement of the policy and activities of the 
League during the war: 

A few days after the United States declared war on the Im- 
perial German Government, the Secretary of the American 
School Peace League issued "A Call to Patriotic Service," ad- 
dressed to the teachers of the United States. This call included 
the program of the League during the war, which is as follows: 

To maintain a civic and moral stability among the youth of the country. 
To inspire anew a love of American institutions and American ideals. 
To foster civic service appropriate to youth, consciously entered upon 

for the nation's welfare. 
To promote an interchange of good- will regardless of race or nationality. 
To teach the value of arbitration, conciliation, and judicial settlement. 
To hold to the ideal of the ultimate triumph of democracy. 

Early in the autumn of 1917, the Executive Committee of 
the American School Peace League announced its policy to 
cooperate with the President in his aim to safeguard the prin- 
ciple of democracy throughout the world. In taking this stand, 
the committee acted in line with the general aim of the League, 
which has always been to lay the foundation for a durable peace, 
for which the United States is now fighting. The members of 
the committee assert that nothing should be done which could 
not be endorsed by the State Department, and they pledge 
their wholehearted support to the Government in this struggle 
for freedom. 

The League responded to the letter of President Wilson, 
addressed to School Officers on August 23, 1917, in which the 

14 



THE WAR FOR PEACE 15 

President appealed for such teaching in the schools as would give 
"a new appreciation of the problems of national life and a deeper 
understanding of the meaning and aims of democracy." Under 
the title, "A Plan to Cooperate with President Wilson in the 
Project outlined in his Letter to School Officers on August 23, 
1917," the League issued the announcement of its Prize Essay 
Contest to the secondary and normal schools of the country, the 
subject for the secondary schools being, "How should the World- 
be Organized so as to Prevent Wars in the Future;" and that for 
the normal schools, "The Teaching of Democracy as a Factor in 
a League of Nations." In sending out this announcement, the 
League asked that the essay contest be incorporated into the 
regular work of the school with the distinct aim of cooperating 
with the President. Practically every State in the Union is 
represented in this patriotic work, and many hundreds of schools 
have introduced this study as an integral part of the school 
program. 

Besides this nation-wide study of the meaning and aims of 
democracy, the League is engaged in other forms of cooperative 
service included in its program issued at the beginning of the war. 



V. The World Peace Foundation 

The World Peace Foundation of Boston, Massachusetts, is a corporation 
founded by Edwin Ginn in 1910. In the language of its by-laws, its purpose 
is to educate the people of all nations to a full knowledge of the waste and 
destructiveness of war, its evil effects on present social conditions and on the 
well-being of future generations, and to promote international justice and the 
brotherhood of man; and, generally, by every practical means to promote 
peace and good will among all mankind. Its officers are: George A. Plimpton, 
President; Edward Cummings, General Secretary; Denys P. Myers, Cor- 
responding Secretary. Its Board of Trustees is as follows: George A. Plimp- 
ton, President; George W. Anderson, George H. Blakeslee, Samuel T. Dutton, 
Samuel J. Elder, William H. P. Faunce, A. Lawrence Lowell, Samuel W. 
McCall, Albert E. Pillsbury, Joseph Swain. 

This Foundation officially says that: 

It will support the efforts of the United States Government 
and the Allies to win the war and set up an international organ- 
ization which will guarantee permanent peace with justice, and 
so make the world safe for democracy and civilization. 



16 



VI. Women Peace Workers 

The following statement, sent to the American Peace Society under date 
of December 29, 1917, was signed by Mrs. Fannie Fern Andrews, Mrs. 
David Cheever, Mrs. J. Malcom Forbes, Miss Katharine McDowell Rice, 
Mrs. John Richardson, Jr. These women are well known workers for world 
peace, prominent in the Woman's Peace Party, in the Massachusetts Peace 
Society, and similar organizations. Mrs. Andrews is secretary of the Amer- 
ican School Peace League and, as is Mrs. Forbes, a Director of the American 
Peace Society. The statement reads: 

We believe today, what we have always believed, that civiliza- 
tion demands the abolition of the war system, and that men and 
women can devote themselves to nothing higher than to work 
for this abolition. 

Since the world had not advanced far enough toward world 
federation to make the present war impossible, we, while hold- 
ing the above ideal, find ourselves in agreement with the policy 
that it be fought until the German people are able and willing 
to make a peace based on the cooperation of law-abiding nations, 
leaving no possibility of world domination by any imperialistic 
autocracy. 

We believe that in taking up arms against the German Govern- 
ment the United States is fighting to dethrone a tyranny that 
threatens, in the words of the President, "to master and debase 
men everywhere." 

We are convinced that our ultimate goal, — the establishment 
of a durable peace through international organization, — car 
now be reached only after the defeat of German might. We 
recognize the unwavering policy of President Wilson, as shown 
in his public utterances, to use the instrument of statesmanship 
whenever and wherever this may contribute to the realization 
of our purpose in this war. Therefore we believe that those who 
are working to the end that this shall be the last war, should 
declare themselves to be loyal to our Government, and should 
support it in every way possible, in its aim to make the world 
safe for democracy. 

Further, we believe that nothing should be done to obstruct 
the waging of this war. We feel that those persons who are 
continually rebuking the Government for our entrance into it, 

17 



18 THE WAR FOR PEACE 

and who are constantly calling at this time for peace, are pro- 
longing the war. We recognize the necessity of a rigid regime 
during its course, and we are glad to bear a temporary curtail- 
ment of our freedom for the ultimate realization of world freedom. 
While not relinquishing for a moment the many kinds of war 
relief activities to which we all are pledged, we feel that the 
imperative duty of every American is to promote the idea of a 
League of Nations, and to stimulate the study of the intricate 
problems which the world will have to face at the Great Settle- 
ment. We believe that it is to this vital and far-reaching con- 
structive and educational work, as well as to relief work, that 
peace organizations should devote themselves during the war. 



VII. The Churches 

The churches ot the United States, irrespective of denomination, are 
practically a unit in the support of the Government in the prosecution of the 
war. The following from the American Branch of the World Alliance for 
Promoting International Friendship through the Churches, headquarters 
105 East 22d Street, New York City, may be said to be typical of the spirit 
of American churches generally, Christian and non-Christian: 

As the United States enters the Great War, the forces of the 
nation are mobilizing for the conflict. What is the place of the 
Church in this hour of crisis and danger? It is to spiritualize the 
nation; to keep the war a conflict for righteousness, liberty, and 
democracy; to hearten and encourage the men who go to the 
front, and their loved ones at home; to build a greater Fellow- 
ship of Reconciliation, consisting of millions who while fighting 
will love their enemies; to wage this war with the determination 
to make an end of war; to so hate war as to be restrained in its 
glorification, noble as is this conflict, lest the hold of war upon 
the imagination of our youth be strengthened; to give itself 
unstintedly to the relief of the suffering at home and abroad 
which the war has brought and will yet bring upon the world. 

In view of existing world conditions the American Branch of 
the World Alliance makes the following declaration in regard to 
the duty resting upon the Church: 

The Church of Christ in America should prove itself the loyal 
and efficient servant of the nation in this time of testing. It 

should bear upon the heart the President and other national 
leaders and the men in service, ever praying and striving that 
the cause to which the Nation has dedicated itself may be car- 
ried through to high achievement. 

The Church in all its branches should humbly and devoutly 
pray for recovery of the lost consciousness of its essential unity 
and universality in Christ, establishing in its membership the 
feeling of a fellowship that transcends the barriers of nation 
and race. It should be the "light" and the "leaven" of the 
world, a living bond holding the nations together in righteousness 
and service. 

The Church should build in all its branches throughout Chris- 

19 



20 THE WAR FOR PEACE 

tendom a world-fellowship of goodwill and reconciliation. It 
should practice self-sacrificing service in the relief of suffering, 
earnestly cultivate love of enemies, and stand ready to share 
in the pressing tasks of reconstruction and rehabilitation when 
this war is ended. 

The Church should teach mankind that God's laws cover the 
whole of human life, individual, national , and international. It 
should deepen the desire for national righteousness and truth, 
unselfishness and brotherliness. 

The Church should add its strength to the movement for 
establishing right international relations on an enduring basis. 
It should vigorously press for a League of Nations, having such 
featmres as periodic conferences, a world court, commissions of 
inquiry > boards of conciliation and arbitration, and adequate 
administrative agencies, to the end that national sovereignty 
shall be more properly related to international judgment and 
opinion. 

The Churches of America should support the policies announced 
by President Wilson in his reply to the Pope : "Punitive damages, 
dismemberment of empires, the establishment of selfish and 
exclusive economic leagues we deem inexpedient and in the end 
worse than futile, no proper basis for a peace of any kind, least of 
all for an enduring peace. That must be based upon justice and 
fairness and the common rights of mankind." 

American Christians have in addition their own special and 
personal tasks in the relations of America to the Far East. 
They should strive to secure Federal legislation providing for 
the adequate protection of aliens, the loyal observance of treaties, 
the early removal of all causes of irritation, and a fundamental 
solution of the whole Asiatic problem. 

These are the principles and the program by which to secure 
world justice, goodwill, and enduring peace. All American 
churches and Christians should take part in establishing these 
principles and in securing these ends. 

The following from the War-Tinie Message of the Federal Council of the 
Churches of Christ in America, under date of May 8-9, 1917, is a further 
expression of the Christian position: 

Almighty God, Father of men, Ruler and Judge of nations, 



THE WAR FOR PEACE 21 

have mercy upon us, we pray Thee, and strengthen us as mem- 
bers of the Church of Christ to meet with courage and fidelity 
the special duties of these times. Give us grace, we beseech 
Thee: 

To purge our own hearts clean of arrogance and selfishness; 

To steadjr and inspire the nation; 

To keep ever before the eyes of ourselves and of our Allies the 
ends for which we fight; 

To hold our own nation true to its professed aims of justice, 
liberty, and brotherhood; 

To testify to our fellow-Christians in every land, most of all 
to those from whom for the time we are estranged, our conscious- 
ness of unbroken unity in Christ; 

To unite in the fellowship of service multitudes who love 
their enemies and are ready to join with them in rebuilding the 
waste places as soon as peace shall come; 

To be diligent in works of relief and mercy, not forgetting those 
ministries to the spirit to which, as Christians, we are especially 
committed; 

To keep alive the spirit of prayer, that in these times of strain 
and sorrow men may be sustained by the consciousness of the 
presence and power of God; 

To hearten those who go to the front, and to comfort their 
loved ones at home; 

To care for the welfare of our young men in the army and 
navy, that they may be fortified in character and made strong 
to resist temptation; 

To be vigilant against every attempt to arouse the spirit of 
vengeance and unjust suspicion toward those of foreign birth or 
sympathies; 

To protect the rights of conscience against every attempt to 
invade them; 

To maintain our Christian institutions and activities unim- 
paired, to be diligent in the observance of the Lord's Day and 
in the study of the Holy Scriptures, that the soul of our nation 
may be nourished and renewed through the worship and service 
of Almighty God; 

To guard the gains of education, of social progress and of 
economic freedom, won at so great a cost, and to maka full use 



22 THE WAR FOR PEACE 

of the occasion to set them still further forward, even by and 
through the war; 

To keep the open mind and the forward look, that the lessons 
learned in war may not be forgotten when comes that just and 
sacred peace for which we pray; 

Above all, to call men everywhere to new obedience to the 
will of our Father God, who in Christ has given Himself in 
supreme self-sacrifice for the redemption of the world, and who 
invites us to share with Him His ministry of reconciliation. 

We humbly beseech Thee to hear us through Jesus Christ our 
Lord. Amen. 



VIII. Belgian Relief Workers 

Mr. Herbert C. Hoover, Chairman of the American Commission for Relief 
in Belgium, sent the following cablegram to President Wilson on April 3, 1917: 

The members of the American Commission for relief in Belgium 
ask me to transmit to you an expression of united devotion and of 
our admiration for the courage and wisdom of your leadership. 
We wish to tell you that there is no word in your historic state- 
ment to Congress that does not find a response in all our hearts. 

For two and a half years we have been obliged to remain silent 
witnesses of the character of the forces dominating this war, but 
we are now at liberty to say that, although we break with great 
regret our association with many German individuals who have 
given sympathetic support to our work, yet your message enun- 
ciates our conviction, born of our intimate experience and contact 
that there is no hope, no democracy or liberalism, and conse- 
quently no real peace and safety of our country, unless the system 
which brought the world into this unfathomable misery can be 
stamped out once for all. 

Mr. Vernon Kellogg, who for two years was with the Commission for 
Relief in Belgium, writes as follows in the Atlantic Monthly for August, 1917: 

. . . I went into Northern France and Belgium to act as 
a neutral, and I did act as a neutral all the time I was there. 
If I learned there anything of military value which could be used 
against the Germans I shall not reveal it. But I came out no 
neutral. Also I went in an ardent hater of war and I came out 
a more ardent one. I have seen that side of the horror and 
waste and outrage of war which is worse than the side revealed 
on the battlefield. How I hope for the end of all war! 

But I have come out believing that that cannot come until any 
people which has dedicated itself to the philosophy and practice 
of war as a means of human advancement is put into a position 
of impotence to indulge its belief at will. My conviction is that 
Germany is such a people , and that it can be put into this position 
only by the result of war itself. It knows no other argument and 
it will accept no other decision. 



23 



IX. Clarence Darrow, of Chicago 

Clarence Darrow, lawyer, pacifist, representative of workingmen's in- 
terests, author and platform speaker, and formerly member of the Illinois 
State Legislature, recently delivered an address, published in the Santa Fe 
Magazine for December, 1917, from which the following extracts are taken: 

. . . I notice that the pro-Germans in the last few months 
have changed to pacifists — and a German pacifist makes me 
smile. I find the arguments that were once used by German 
sympathizers are today the arguments of the pacifists. 

We were told that we should be neutral in this great war. For 
almost three years America was neutral — while the world was 
burning. For nearly three years we contented ourselves with 
selling cannon and shot and powder to poor, fighting France. 
While America was neutral I was one American who was never 
neutral. I knew which side I was on the day that the German 
criminal military machine invaded Belgium. I did not stop to 
think. I only felt . In a great crisis like that I would be ashamed 
to think. I have never been neutral on anything. No doubt 
I have often been wrong — but not neutral. And on any great 
question that involves the rights and liberties of men no one 
can be so far wrong as to be neutral. If you are a partisan you 
have at least once chance in two of being right; if you are neutral 
you have no chance to be right. 

Our American pacifists sat neutral while Belgium was invaded, 
while France was invaded, while the submarines were killing 
their victims upon the ''German ocean," while they were giving 
their orders to America, a people of one hundred million souls — 
although I doubted the souls while we were taking orders. But 
we have found them now, at last, late though it be, and our 
people will never rest until victory is won. 

When I hear a man advising the American people to state 
the terms of peace, I know he is working for Germany. He may 
not know it, but I know it. I think that we at least should 
begin to fight before we tell when we will stop. There is nobody 
on earth who knows when or where we will stop the war. Where 
we stop, though, I hope will be in Berlin! . 

When this war is over we will all know it. When Germany is 

24 



WEE WAR FOR PEACE 25 

fairly beaten we will find it out. She probably won't be re- 
pentant, but some day she will be beaten and then we can talk 
terms of peace, and not until then. . . . 

I want to refer to one thing more. Many of my old friends 
— that is, those who were my friends — and some of my newer 
friends say, "You are fighting to make democracy safe in the 
world; you are fighting for liberty on the seas, and you are 
losing liberty at home." 

I want to say a word about that, and I want to say it per- 
fectly truthfully as I see it. I will confess it has given me some 
alarm, more in the beginning than it does today. I confess 
that we have interfered with meetings and with papers where 
we would not have done it had we not been at war, but this 
means nothing so far as the fundamental purpose, the traditions, 
and the future of America are concerned. 

Let us look at this question carefully. Possibly we could 
have got along with less of it. I don't know. Those who are 
charged with the terrible responsibility of running this govern- 
ment know better than I, and the President himself, great and 
wise as he is, confessed not long ago in an open letter to a pub- 
lisher who complained, that he didn't know where to draw the 
line, that he had done the best he could, that he wanted to pre- 
serve liberty, but he wanted to preserve the United States and 
civilization, and he admitted that he may have done it bung- 
lingly. And everyone must admit this, if he thinks of it at all: 
"I believe in liberty; I believe in the greatest possible freedom 
of speech and the press; but I know this, that the rules for war 
and the rules for peace are not the same and cannot be the 
same." 

Our liberty is not really founded in our constitution and in our 
statutes. These are but the expression of the faith of the people 
at the time they are made. Real liberty rests in the end in the 
mind and the hearts of the American people. 

I have no fear that after the war is over these liberties will 
not come back to the people. We have fought too long for 
them, we have lived under them too long, and there is no danger 
that the American people will forget. 

Just one thing more. I am the last person to claim that 
everything is right in America. When the pacifists talk with us 



26 THE WAR FOR PEACE 

about the war they point to the imperfections at home; and there 
are imperfections here. I have often criticized many of our 
laws, our institutions, and our customs, and I expect to do it 
again. This land is not perfect. Nothing is. But, however 
imperfect, in spite of all that we should do and I hope will do in 
future years, it is still the best, the greatest, and the freest country 
on the face of the earth. And even though America is not all 
we wish it were and all we hope it some time will be, it is our 
business to preserve what we have and make it better than it is 
for the generations that are to come after we are gone. 

I have no time today to discuss the troubles of America; no 
time. I will wait until this war is over. I enjoy discussing 
philosophy, or socialism, or single tax, or even religion. But 
if I had a neighbor in the house discussing socialism, and some- 
body told me the house was on fire, I would stop the argument 
until after I had put out the fire. 

Labor and capital must treat each other fairly during this 
great struggle. They must be considerate of one another, for 
we are fighting together. But this is not a time to settle the- 
oretical questions or lifelong differences. After the war is over, 
if need be, we can take them up again. But let me say this: 
I am not naturally an optimist; I don't know whether this war 
will be the last or not. It may not be. It has been the most 
important. I don't know what we may get out of the future. 
No one can tell what the future has in store for the human race. 
But I have some faith, and I believe that this world will not be 
the same world again after this war is done. It will change old 
ideas and old institutions, and will build up the new. I am 
willing to await any struggle between capital and labor. It 
may be that, as we come together, the rich and the poor, all 
shades of opinion, the Catholic, the Protestant, the free-thinker, 
all classes of men, as we come together in one great common 
cause we may know each other better when the war is done. 

It may be, and it ought to be, and I hope it will be, that after 
this war is done capital and labor will understand each other 
better than they did when the war began, and by working to- 
gether, looking into each other's eyes, and living together, dying 
together, helping each other in the greatest effort of the human 
race, after the rich and the poor and the high and the low have 



THE WAR FOR PEACE 27 

helped each other in war they may learn the great lesson that, 
while mutual helpfulness is good in war, it may be equally good 
in peace. And I have hopes that we shall learn, and that the world 
will be better after the suffering and the trials and the tribulations 
have passed, that a better earth will come, for all the blood that 
has been poured out and enriched it and mellowed it and hal- 
lowed it. 



X. William Howard Taft 

Ex-President William Howard Taft is president of the League to Enforce 
Peace, and vice-president of the American Peace Society. In an address 
before the General Conference of the Unitarian and other Christian Churches 
at Montreal, Canada, September 26, 1917, Mr. Taft said: 

. . . He who proposes peace now either does not see the 
stake for which the Allies are fighting, or wishes the German 
military autocracy still to control the destinies of all of us as to 
peace or war. Those who favor permanent world peace must 
oppose with might and main the proposals for peace at this 
juncture in the war, whether made in socialistic councils, in pro- 
German conferences, or bj*- Pope Benedict. That the Pontiff 
of the greatest Christian Church should wish to bring to an end 
a war in which millions of its communion are on both sides is 
to be expected. That he should preserve a difficult neutrality 
is also natural. That his high purpose is to save the world from 
further suffering goes without saying. But the present is not 
the opportunity of an intervening peacemaker, who must assume 
that compromise is possible. The Allies are fighting for a 
principle the maintenance of which affects the future of civiliza- 
tion. If they do not achieve it they have sacrificed the flower 
of their youth and mortgaged their future for a century and all 
for nothing. This is not a war in which the stake is territory 
or the sphere of influence of one nation over another. The 
Allies cannot concede peace until they conquer it. When they 
do so, it will be permanent. Otherwise they fail. There are 
wars like that between Japan and Russia, in which President 
Roosevelt properly and successfully intervened to bring about 
a peace, and helped the parties to a settlement. The principle 
at stake and the power and territory were of such a character 
that a settlement might be made substantially permanent. 
But the present issue is like that in our Civil War, which was 
whether the Union was to be preserved and the cancer of slavery 
to be cut out. Peace proposals to President Lincoln were quite 
as numerous as those of today, and were moved by quite as high 
motives. But there was no compromise possible. Either 
slavery and disunion won or lost. So today the great moral 
object of the war must be achieved or defeated. . . . 

28 



• THE WAR FOR PEACE 29 

President Wilson says the Allies are fighting to make the 
world safe for democracy. Some misconception has been 
created on this head. The Allies are not struggling to force a 
particular form of government on Germany. If the German 
people continue to wish an Emperor, it is not the purpose of the 
Allies to require them to have a republic. Their purpose is to 
end the military policy and foreign policy of Germany that looks 
to the maintenance of a military and naval machine with its 
hair-trigger preparation for use against her neighbors. If this 
continues, it will entail on every democratic government the 
duty of maintaining a similar armament in self-defense or, what 
is more likely, the duty will be wholly or partly neglected. 
Thus the policy of Germany, with her purpose and destiny, will 
threaten every democracy. This is the condition which it is the 
determined purpose of the Allies, as interpreted by President 
Wilson, to change. 

How is the change to be effected? By defeating Germany in 
this war. The German people have been very loyal to their 
Emperor because his leadership accords with the false philosophy 
of the State and German destiny with which they have been 
indoctrinated and poisoned. A defeat of the military machine, 
a defeat of the Frankenstein of the military dynasty, to which 
they have been sacrificed, must open their eyes to the hideous 
futility of their political course. The German Government will 
then be changed as its people will have it changed, to avoid a 
recurrence of such a tragedy as they have deliberately prepared 
for themselves. 

Men who see clearly the kind of peace which we must have, in 
order to be a real and lasting peace, can have no sympathy 
therefore with a patched-up peace, one made at a council table, 
the result of diplomatic chaffering and bargaining. Men who 
look forward to a League of the World to Enforce Peace in the 
future can have no patience with a compromise that leaves the 
promoting cause of the present awful war unaffected and un- 
removed. This war is now being fought bj- the Allies as a 
League to Enforce Peace. Unless they compel it by victory, 
they do not enforce it. They do not make the military autoc- 
racies of the world into nations fit for a World League, unless 
they convince them by a lesson of defeat. 



30 THE WAR FOR PEACE 

And now what of the United States? When the war came on, 
there were a few in the United States who felt that the invasion 
of Belgium required a protest on the part of our Government, 
and some indeed who felt that we should join in the war at 
once, but the great body of the American people, influenced by 
our traditional policy of avoiding European quarrels, stood by 
the Administration in desiring to maintain a strict neutrality. 
I think it is not unfair to say that a very large proportion of the 
intelligent and thinking people of the United States — and that 
means a majority — sympathized with the Allies in the struggle 
which they were making. 

But many with us of German descent, prompted by a pride in 
the notable advance in the world of German enterprise, German 
ingenuity, German discipline, German efficiency, and regarding 
the struggle as an issue between Teuton and Slav, extended 
their sympathy to their Fatherland. As conscientiously as 
possible the Administration and the country pursued the course 
laid down by international law as that which a neutral should 
take. International law is the rule of conduct of nations toward 
one another, accepted and acquiesced in by all nations. It is 
not always as definite as one would like, and the acquiescence of 
all nations is not always as clearly established as it ought to be. 
But in the law of war as to capture at sea of commercial vessels, 
the principles have been established clearly by the decision of 
prize courts of all nations, English, American, Prussian, and 
French. The right of non-combatants on commercial vessels, 
officers, crew, and passengers, either enemy or neutral, to be 
secure from danger of life has always been recognized and never 
contested. Nevertheless, Germany sank without warning 150 
American citizens, men, women and children, and sent them to 
their death by a submarine torpedo, simply because they hap- 
pened to be on English or American commercial vessels. We 
protested and Germany halted for a time. We thought that if 
we condoned the death of 150, we might still maintain peace 
with that power. But it was not to be, and after more than a 
year Germany announced her purpose to resume this murderous 
and illegal course toward innocent Americans. Had we hesi- 
tated, we would have lost our independence as a people. We 
would have subscribed abjectly to the doctrine that might makes 



* THE WAR FOR PEACE 31 

right. Germany left no door open to us as a self-respecting 
nation except that which led to war. She deliberately forced us 
into the ranks of her enemies, and she did it because she was 
obsessed with the belief that the submarine was the instrument 
of destruction by which she might win the war. She recked 
not that, as she used it, it was a weapon of murder of innocents. 
Making military efficiency her god, and exalting the appliances 
of science in the killing of men, she ignored all other consequences. 

Germany's use of the submarine brought us into the war. 
But being in, we recognize as fully as any of the Allies do its 
far greater issue to be whether German militarism shall con- 
tinue after this war to be a threat to the peace of the world, or 
whether we shall end that threat by this struggle in which we 
are to spend our life's blood. We must not therefore be turned 
from the stern necessity of winning this war. 

When the war began and its horrible character was soon dis- 
closed, there were many religious persons who found their faith 
in God shaken by the fact that millions of innocent persons 
could be headed into this vortex of blood and destruction with- 
out the saving intervention of their Creator. But the progress 
of the war has revealed much, and it has stimulated our just 
historic sense. It shows what the world has become, through the 
initiative of Germany and the following on of the other nations, 
afflicted with the cancer of militarism. God reveals the great- 
ness of His power and His omnipotence not by fortuitous and 
sporadic intervention, but by the working out of His inexorable 
law. A cancer if it is not to consume the body must be cut out, 
and the cutting of it necessarily involves suffering and pain in 
the body. The sacrifices of lives and treasure are inevitable in 
the working out of the cure of the World Malady. But we must 
win the war to vindicate this view. 

We are now able to see the Providential punishment and weak- 
ness that follows the violation of moral law. The crass mate- 
rialism of the German philosophy that exalts force above mo- 
rality, power above honor and decency, success above humanity, 
has blinded the German ruling caste to the strength of moral 
motives that control other peoples, and involved them in the 
fundamental mistakes that will cause their downfall. They 
assumed that England, burdened with Ireland, would violate 



32 THE WAR FOR PEACE 

her own obligation ^ind abandon Belgium and would leave her 
Ally France to be deprived of all her colonial possessions. They 
assumed that France was decadent, permeated with socialism, 
and unable to make a contest in her state of unpreparedness. 
They assumed that England's colonies, attached only by the 
lightest tie, and entirely independent if they chose to be, would 
not sacrifice themselves to help the mother land in her struggle. 
How false the German conclusion as to England's national 
conscience and fighting power, as to France's decadence and 
patriotic fervor and strength, and as to the filial loyalty of 
England's daughters! And now, at the crisis of the war, when 
the victory must abide the weight of wealth, resources, food, 
equipment, and fighting men, the German military dynasty, 
contemptuous of a peace-loving people, brings into the contest a 
nation fresh in its strength, which can furnish more money, 
more food, and more fighting men, if need be, than any other 
nation in the world. 

But we are at a danger point. England and France and 
Russia since 1914 have been fighting the battle of the world, 
and fighting for us of America. The three years or more of war 
have drained their vitality, strained their credit, exhausted 
their man-power, subjected many of their non-combatants to 
suffering and destruction, and they have the war- weariness 
which dulls the earlier eager enthusiasm for the principles at 
stake. Now specious proposals for peace are likely to be most 
alluring to the faint-hearted, and most powerful in the hands 
of traitors. Russia rid of the Czar is torn with dissensions, and 
the extreme socialists and impractical theorists, blind to the 
ultimate destruction of their hopes that a loss of this war will 
entail, are many of them turning to a separate peace. 

The intervention of the United States by her financial aid has 
helped much, but her armies are needed, and she, a republic 
unprepared, must have time to prepare. The war is now to 
be determined by the active tenacity of purpose of the con- 
testants. England showed that tenacity in the wars of Napo- 
leon. Napoleon succumbed. General Grant in his memoirs 
says that the battle is won not in the first day, but by the com- 
mander and the army that is ready, even after apparent defeat, 
to begin the next day. It is the side that has the nerve that 



THE WAR FOR PEACE 33 

will win. The intervention of the United States has strength- 
ened that nerve in England, France, and Italy. But delay and 
disappointment give full opportunity to the lethargic, the 
cowardly, the factionalist to make the task of the patriot and 
the loyal men doubly heavy. This is the temper of the situation 
among the European Allies. 

With us at home the great body of our people are loyal and 
strong for the war. Of course a people, however intelligent, 
when very prosperous and comfortable, and not well advised as 
to the vital concern that they have in the issue of a war across a 
wide ocean and thousands of miles away, — it takes time to 
convince. But we have, for the first time in the history of our 
Republic, begun a war right. We have begun with a conscrip- 
tion law, which requires service from men of a certain age from 
every walk of life. It is democratic in principle, and yet it 
offers to the Government the means of selection so that those 
who shall be sent to the front may be best fitted to represent the 
nation there, and those best able to do the work in the fields 
and factory essential to our winning at the front may be re- 
tained. We have adopted a merit system of selecting from the 
intelligent and educated youth of the country the company 
officers of an army of a million and a half or two million that we 
are now preparing. The machinery of the draft naturally has 
creaked some because it had to be so hastily constructed, but on 
the whole it has worked well. Those who devised it and have 
carried it through are entitled to great credit. The lessons of 
the three years of the war are being learned and applied in our 
war equipment and in neutralizing, by new construction, the 
submarine destruction of commercial transports. Adequate 
measures for the raising of the money needed to finance our 
Allies have been carried through Congress or are so near enact- 
ment as to be practically on the statute book. Food conserva- 
tion is provided for. But of course it takes time for a hundred 
million of peace lovers and non-militarists to get ready, however 
apt, however patriotic, however determined. It is in the period 
of the year before the United States can begin to fight that the 
strain is to come in Europe. But Germany is stopped on the 
Western and Italian fronts. The winter coming will be harder 
on her than on the Allies. "It is dogged that does it." Stamp 



34 THE WAR FOR PEACE 

on all proposals of peace as ill advised or seditious, and then time 
will make for our certain victory. 

While there has been pro-German sentiment in the United 
States, and while the paid emissaries of Germany have been busy 
trying to create as much opposition to the war as possible, and 
have found a number of weak dupes and unintelligent persons 
who don't understand the importance of the war, to aid them, 
our Allies should know that the whole body of the American 
people will earnestly support the President and Congress in 
carrying out the measures which have been adopted by the 
United States to win this war. 

When the war is won, the United States will wish to be heard 
and will have a right to be heard as to the terms of peace — not 
one of material conquest. It is a moral victory the world should 
win. I think I do not mistake the current of public sentiment 
throughout our entire country, in saying that our people will 
favor an international agreement by which the peace brought 
about through such blood and suffering and destruction and 
enormous sacrifices shall be preserved by the joint power of the 
world. Whether the terms of the League to Enforce Peace as 
they are will be taken as a basis for agreement, or a modified 
form, something of the kind must be attempted. Meantime, 
let us hope and pray that all the Allies will reject all proposals 
for settlement and compromise and adhere rigidly and religiously 
to the principle that, until a victorious result gives security that 
the world shall not be again drenched in blood through the 
insanely selfish policy of a military caste of a nation ruling a 
deluded people intoxicated with material success and power, 
there will be no peace. 



XL William Jennings Bryan 

Mr. Bryan's views upon the general questions of war and peace are too 
familiar to need a restatement here. His position relative to our present 
situation leaves no doubt in the mind of any one interested to know. In 
The Commoner, for August, 1917, Mr. Bryan wrote: 

RESISTING THE DRAFT 

The number of those resisting the draft is, fortunately, very 
few: there should be none. Some are conscientiously opposed 
to war — any war — and may prefer to submit to any punishment 
the Government sees fit to inflict rather than to take up arms, 
but even such cannot justify resistance or the giving of en- 
couragement to those who do resist. Still less can tolerance be 
shown to those who, while opposing conscription, attempt to 
draft others to join them in opposing conscription. War is a 
last resort — it is a reflection upon civilization that it still red- 
dens the earth — but so long as nations go to war the citizen can- 
not escape a citizen's duty. If his conscience forbids him to do 
what his Government demands, he must submit without com- 
plaint to any punishment inflicted, whether the punishment be 
imprisonment or death. 

This is the best government on earth — the one most respon- 
sive to the will of the people, but it is a government of the people 
— not of one or a few men. If a few are permitted to resist a 
law — any law — because they do not like it, government becomes 
a farce. The law must be enforced — resistance is anarchy. 

In the same number we also read : 

ABUSING FREE SPEECH 

Before our Nation enters a war it is perfectly proper to discuss 
the wisdom of going to war, but the discussion is closed when 
Congress acts. After that, no one should be permitted to cloak 
attacks upon his Government or aid to the enemy under the 
claim that he is exercising freedom of speech. No sympathy, 
therefore, will be wasted upon those who have been arrested for 
unpatriotic utterances. They abuse free speech. And this 
applies to attacks on the Allies as well as to attacks upon the 

35 



36 THE WAR FOR PEACE 

United States. We can no more allow our Allies to be crushed 
than we can afford to be crushed ourselves. The defeat of our 
Allies would throw the whole burden of the war upon us. We 
must stand together and fight it through. There are only two 
sides to a war — every American must be on the side of the 
United States. 

Again: 

WRITE TO WASHINGTON 

Unity throughout the Nation is imperatively necessary during 
the war — dissension would be disastrous, we must win— and 
division among us would only prolong the war and increase its 
cost. Those who advised against entering the war should be 
even more anxious for peace than those who advised entrance 
into the war — and the shortest road to peace is the road straight 
ahead. 

But this does not mean that the citizen shall cease to think or 
to have opinions. Neither does it mean that he shall not express 
himself, if he expresses himself in such a way as to aid his own 
country and not the enemy. Ours is a representative govern- 
ment, a government in which the people rule through repre- 
sentatives. The President, no less than Congress, is a servant 
of the people. He is elected by the people, and the authority 
conferred upon him is conferred by the constitution — the people 
speaking through their organic law. The people are supreme. 
That is what democracy means — a government in which the 
people rule. 

In the same paper for September, 1917, Mr. Bryan said: 

STAND BY THE GOVERNMENT 

The constitution — our organic law — vests in Congress the 
right to declare war — and Congress has declared a state of war 
to exist. 

The constitution makes the President commander-in-chief of 
the army and the navy, and the President is directing the war 
on land and sea. 

The constitution gives to Congress the right to levy taxes and 
to borrow money, and Congress is doing both. 



THE WAR FOR PEACE 37 

The President and Congress were elected by the people and 
are responsible to the people; they speak for the people — the 
people have no other spokesmen. Acquiescence in the will of 
the people, expressed through their authorized representatives, 
is "the first law of the Republic." There is no alternative but 
anarchy. Before the Government acts, discussion is proper; 
after action, obedience is a duty. 

Again, in the October number, Mr. Bryan expressed himself thus: 

With the citizen the question of duty is sometimes more im- 
portant than the question of rights. The vital question is not 
what he can do but what he ought to do. The legislator must 
discuss questions before Congress — this is necessary to intelligent 
action by Congress, but this necessity does not confront the 
citizen in private life. There is no reason why anyone should 
discuss that which has been done — v/hen final action is taken, 
acquiescence on the part of the citizen becomes a duty. 

In the case of proposed legislation, it is better that the citizen 
should communicate directly with those empowered to act— the 
President, senators and congressmen — than to speak through the 
press, on the platform, or on the street. If one is really anxious 
to serve his country, he will choose the method of expression 
that promises the maximum of good and the minimum of risk 
of doing his country harm. Patriotism requires some to give 
their lives; it requires others to give their money; it may require 
some to hold their peace rather than risk creating dissension or 
discord by public expression of opinion when such expression is 
unnecessary. 

Finally, in the issue for December, 1917, above Mr. Bryan's signature, we 
read: 

A POWERFUL DOCUMENT 

In this issue will be found the full text of the President's 
annual message. It is a powerful document. While the request 
for a declaration of war against Austria will command immediate 
attention and action, the parts which are most vital and far- 
reaching are the appeal to the German people and the reference 
to the Russian situation. The argument addressed to the 



38 THE WAR FOR PEACE 

masses whom the Kaiser is using to forward his ambitious plans 
ought to be translated into the German language and distributed 
by airships. If the assurance given does not stir revolt against 
autocratic authority, the people must be strangely blind to 
their own welfare. 

The President is patient with Russia and hopeful that her 
people now freed from despotism will yet use their power to 
check the land-hunger of Germany's militarists. It is the clearest 
statement yet made of the terms of peace and ought to make a 
profound impression on the world. 



XII. Theodore Marburg, of Baltimore 

United States Minister to Belgium, 1912-13, President of the American 
Society for the Judicial Settlement of International Disputes, 1915, promi- 
nent among the organizers of the League to Enforce Peace, Mr. Theodore 
Marburg's views relative to the present war are significant , In The Humani- 
tarian for December, 1917, he writes: 

Can we afford to shake hands with the unholy thing — dripping 
with blood of innocents — known as Germany? 

Can we afford to make a pact with a deliberate violator of law, 
human and divine? 

What semblance of reality would attach to sitting at the 
council table with a creature false to its express and solemn 
promise — its promise not to violate Belgium? What value 
would lie in an agreement with such a State? 

In the intercourse of men, certain things are taken for granted: 
that they will keep their word, that they will respect the law, 
that they will observe the common dictates of humanity, that 
they will act as gentlemen. When they fail us in any of these 
fundamentals, the situation becomes impossible. 

What of a Nation that fails in all of them? A league of 
nations which should include a State motived as Germany is 
motived today would be a rope of sand. Intellectual honesty 
— honesty to one's self — is a highly important quality. Nations 
making a compact with a perjured^Germany would not be honest 
to themselves. For they would know that she could not be 
counted upon to keep her word. When confidence in the good 
intentions of the neighbor is destroyed, we have feud, not society. 
A league composed of nations which^lacked confidence in one 
another would be shadow, not substance. From the very be- 
ginning it would move in a false atmosphere. Who can doubt 
the result? 

And what of a league from which Germany and her allies 
were left out? 

For the period of the war, yes! Organization of the Allies 
into a working league now would be of incalculable advantage. 
It should be formed at once; is, in fact, already in being, so far 
as relates to community of aims and loose cooperation, though 
to accomplish its tremendous task it needs close cooperation. 

39 



40 THE WAR FOR PEACE 

It is urged that if a league is formed now by the Allies it will be 
looked upon by Germany after the war as directed against her 
interests and therefore less likely to win her approval and adhe- 
sion. On the other hand it has been pointed out that permanent 
unions, such as the American Union, are born of the needs of the 
day, that the Allies need now the machinery which will make 
their cooperation effective, and that we are therefore likely to 
encounter less opposition among them to the formation of a 
working league now than if we wait until this pressure of ne- 
cessity has passed. Two considerations may be advanced in 
this connection: 

1. It will be far more difficult to set up an effective and en- 
during league if Germany wins the war; and the able organization 
of the Allies in a working league now will help prevent this 
catastrophe. 

2. If Germany is regenerated it will be by reason of the fact 
that she has recognized in her present leaders the real enemies of 
the German State and people. 

Just as the new France, which followed the fall of Napoleon, 
was soon accepted by the European world as an entirely friendly 
Power, and in its turn harbored no animosity against the coali- 
tion which had overthrown Napoleon, so, it is to be presumed, 
the new Germany will sit as a friend at the council table of 
Europe and of the world, enjoying the friendship of, and enter- 
taining friendly feelings for, her sister nations. 

But in order to succeed after the war, a league which plans 
the use of force in any contingencies whatsoever must embrace 
all or nearly all the Great Powers. Less than this would con- 
stitute but little advance on the present system of opposing 
alliances. It might postpone war, as did the existence of the 
Entente and the Triple Alliance. But, like them, it would run 
the risk of making war universal if it did come. . . . 



XIII. Samuel Gompers 

As president of the American Federation of Labor for thirty -five years and 
editor of its official magazine The Federationist, Samuel Gompers is the most 
widely known and representative leader of organized labor in America. He 
was elected president of the American Alliance for Labor and Democracy 
upon the formation of that organization at Minneapolis, September 5 to 7, 
1917. The following extracts are from the address which he delivered on accept- 
ing that office: 

I have counted myself happy in the companionship of the men 
and women who called themselves pacifists. There was not a 
State or national or international peace society of which I was 
not a member, and in many instances an officer. As a trade 
unionist, with its practices and its philosophies, I have been in 
happy accord with our movement for international peace. 

At a great gathering in Faneuil Hall, Boston, some years ago, 
I gave utterance to my soul's conviction that the time had come 
when great international wars had been put to an end, and I 
expressed the opinion that in the last analysis, if those who are 
the profit-mongers by "war" undertook to create a war, the 
working people of the countries of the world would stop work 
simultaneously, if necessary, in order to prevent international 
war. 

. I was sent as a delegate from the American Federation 
of Labor to the International Congress of Labor in 1909, held at 
Paris, France, and there at that conference, incidental to it, 
there was arranged one of the greatest mass-meetings I have 
ever attended, at which the representatives of the labor move- 
ment of each country declared that there would not be another 
international war. 

And I went home, happy in the further proof that the time of 
universal peace had come. And I attended more peace con- 
ferences. I was still firmly persuaded that the time had come, 
and until 1914 I was in that Fool's Paradise. I doubt if there 
were many who were so thoroughly shocked to the innermost 
depths of their being as I was with the breaking out of the 
European War. But it had come! And as it went on, ruth- 
lessly, we saw a terrific conflict in which the dominating spirit 

41 



42 THE WAR FOR PEACE 

was that the people attacked must be subjugated to the will of 
the great autocrat of his time regardless of how our sympathies 
ran, and that men who had given the best years of their lives in 
the effort to find some means, some secret of science or of nature, 
so that the slighest ill or pain of the most insignificant of the 
race might be assuaged, turned to purposes of destruction. At 
the call of this autocrat, His Imperial Majesty the Emperor of 
Germany, men were set at attack, and we found that these very 
men were clutching at each other's throats and seeking each 
other's destruction. . . . 

The United States has declared that she can no longer live in 
safety when there is stalking throughout the earth this thunder- 
ous machine of murder. The United States authoritatively has 
declared that peace is desirable and should be brought about, but 
that peace is impossible so long as life and liberty are challenged 
and menaced. The Republic of the United States has cast her 
lot with the Allied countries fighting against the greatest military 
machine ever erected in the history of the world. 

I am made ill when I see or hear anyone suffering the slightest 
pain or anguish, and yet I hold that it is essential that the sacri- 
fice must be made that humanity shall never again be cursed by 
a war such as the one which has been thrust upon us. 



COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC INFORMATION 

(Established by Order of the President, April 14, 1917) 



Your Government is willing to send you WITHOUT CHARGE (except as 
noted) any TWO of the Pamphlets listed below. 



I. RED WHITE AND BLUE SERIES 

1. How the War Came to America. 

Contents: Developments of our policy reviewed and explained from August, 
1914, to April, 1917. Appendix: the President's address to the Senate, January 
22, 1917; his War Message to Congress, April 2, 1917; his Flag Day address at 
Washington, June 14, 1917. 32 pages. (Translations into German, Polish, 
Bohemian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Portuguese, Croatian and Yiddish. 48 
pages.) 

2. National Service Handbook. {Price 15 cents.) 

Contents: Description of all civic and military organizations directly or in- 
directly connected with war work. 246 pages. 

3. The Battle Line of Democracy. {Price 15 cents.) 

Contents: The best collection of patriotic prose and poetry bearing on the war 
and our ideals. 134 pages. 

4. The President's Flag Day Address, with Evidence of Germany's Plans. 

Contents: The President's speech with the facts to which he alludes explained 
by carefully selected notes. 32 pages. 

5. Conquest and Kultur. Edited by Wallace Notestein and Elmer E. Stoll 

(University of Minnesota) . 

Contents: Quotations from German writers revealing the plans and purposesof 
pan-Germany. One chapter is devoted entirely to the German attitude toward 
America. 160 pages. 

6. German War Practices: Part I — Treatment of Civilians. Edited by 

Dana C. Munro (Princeton University), George C. Sellery (University 
of Wisconsin) , and August C . Krey (University of Minnesota) . 

Contents: Methods of the German military machine in Belgium and Northern 
France; facts stated on the basis of American and German evidence only. 91 pages. 

7. War Cyclopedia: A Handbook for Ready Reference on the Great War. 

{Price 25 cents.) Edited by Frederic L. Paxson (University of Wis- 
consin), Edward S. Corwin (Princeton University), and Samuel B. 
Harding (Indiana University) . 

Contents: Over 1000 articles covering all phases of the war, with special reference 
to America's policy, interests, and activities; colored map, chronological outline. 
THE BEST SINGLE BOOK ON THE WAR. 321 pages. 

8. German Treatment of Conquered Territory: Part II of "German War 

Practices." Edited by Dana C. Munro (Princeton University) , George 
C. Sellery (University of Wisconsin), and August C. Krey (University 
of Minnesota) . 

Contents: Continuation of No. 6; deals with the systematic exploitation of 
occupied territory by the Germans under the Rathenau Plan, the burning (f 
Louvain, and their wanton destruction in the evacuated districts of Northern 
France. 61 pages. 

43 



44 LIST OF PUBLICATIONS 

9. War, Labor, and Peace: Some Recent Addresses and Writings of the 
President. 

Contents: The American reply to the Pope's Peace Proposals (August 27, 1917); 
Address to the American Federation of Labor, at Buffalo, N. Y. (November 12, 
1917); Annual Message to Congress, asking a declaration of war with Austria- 
Hungary, dealing with the Russian situation, and requesting Congress to pass ad- 
ditional war legislation (December 4, 1917); Address setting forth the American 
peace program (January 8, 1918); Reply to Chancellor von Hertling and Count 
Czernin (February 11, 1918). (In press.) 

(Other issues in preparation.) 

II. WAR INFORMATION SERIES 

101. The War Message and Facts Behind It. By William Stearns Davis 

(University of Minnesota) and others. 
Contents: The President's Message of April 2, 1917, with notes explaining in 
further detail the events to which he refers; also including historical data and 
setting forth in clear, simple language, the fundamentals underlying the Presi- 
dent's important message. 32 pages. 

102. The Nation in Arms. 

Contents: Two addresses by Secretaries Lane and Baker showing why we are 
at war. These are two of the most forceful and widely quoted speeches the war 
has produced. 16 pages. 

103. The Government of Germany. By Charles D. Hazen (Columbia 

University) . 
Contents: Explanation of the constitution of the German Empire and of 
Prussia, showing the way in which the Prussian monarch controls Germany. 
16 pages. (Translation into German published by the Society of Friends of 
German Democracy, 32 Union Square, New York.) 

104. The Great War: From Spectator to Participant. By Andrew C. 

McLaughlin (University of Chicago) . 
Contents: A review of the attitude of the American public in passing from 
spectator to participant, showing how events transformed the temper of a 
pacific nation which finally found war unavoidable. 16 pages. 

105. A War of Self-Defense. 

Contents: Addresses by Secretary of State Robert Lansing and Assistant 
Secretary of Labor Louis F. Post, showing how war was forced upon us. These 
two eloquent speeches give a lucid review of events. 22 pages. 

106. American Loyalty. By Citizens of German Descent. 

Contents: Expressions by American citizens of German descent who have 
found in America their highest ideal of political liberty and feel that America is 
now fighting the battle of liberalism in Germany as well as in the rest of the 
world. 24 pages. 

107. Amerikanische Biirgertreue. German translation of No. 6. 

108. American Interest in Popular Government Abroad. By E. B. Greene 

(University of Illinois) . 
Contents: A clear historical account, with quotations from Washington, 
Monroe, Webster. Lincoln and other public men showing America's continuous 
recognition of her vital interest in the cause of liberalism throughout the world . 
Unpublished material from the Government archives throws an interesting light 
on our policy during the great German democratic revolution of 1848. 16 pages. 

109. Home Reading Course for Citizen Soldiers. Prepared by the War 

Department. 
Contents: A course of 30 daily lessons offered to the men selected for service 
in the National Army as a practical help in getting started in the right way. 
62 pages. 

110. First Session of the War Congress. Compiled by Charles Merz. 

Contents: A complete summary of all legislation passed by the First Session 
of the 65th Congress. 48 pages. 

111. The German War Code. By George W. Scott (formerly of Columbia 

University) and J. W. Garner (University of Illinois). 
Contents: An illuminating comparison of the official German War Manual 
( Kriegsbrauch im Landkriege) with the official war manuals of the United 
States, Great Britain, and France. 16 pages. 



LIST OF PUBLICATIONS 45 

112. American and Allied Ideals. By Stuart P. Sherman (University of 

Illinois. ) 

Contents- Addressed to these who are "neither hot nor cold" in the war, this 
pamphlet presents the reasons why all who believe in the principles of FREE- 
DOM. RIGHT, AND JUSTICE, which are the ideals of America and of the 
Allies, should aid their cause. 23 pages 

113. German Militarism and Its German Critics, By Charles Altschul. 

Contents. A careful study of German Militarism before the war, based on 
evidence drawn from newspapers published in Germany; helps to explain the 
CRIMES and ATROCITIES committed by Germany in the present war. 
40 pages. 

A German edition of No. 113 is also in press. 

114. The War for Peace. By Arthur D. Call, Secretary of the American 

Peace Society. 
Contents A compilation of the official statements and other utterances of 
the leading Peace organizations and leaders, showing how the present war is 
viewed by Americar friends of Peace. 42 pages. 

115. Why America Fights Germany. By John S. P. Tatlock (Stanford Uni- 

versity) . 
Contents' A brief statement of why the United States entered the war; con- 
crete yet comprehensive. 13 pages. 

116. The Study of the Great War. By Samuel B. Harding (Indiana Uni- 

versity) . 
Contents: A topical outline with extensive extracts from the sources and 
reading references; intended for college and high school classes, clubs, and 
others. 96 pages. 

117. The Activities of the Committee on Public Information. 

Contents: A report made to the President, January 7, 1918. 20 pages. 

(Other issues in preparation. 

III. LOYALTY LEAFLETS 

A series of leaflets of ordinary envelope size. Designed especially for the 
busy man or woman who wants the important facts concerning the war and 
our participation in it put SIMPLY, BRIEFLY and FORCIBLY. 

201. Friendly Words to the Foreign Born. By Hon. Joseph Bufhngton, 

Senior United States Circuit Judge of the Third Circuit. (Transla- 
tions into the principal foreign languages are in press.) 

202. The Prussian System. By F. C. Walcott, of the United States Food 

Administration . 

203. Labor and the War. President Wilson's address to the American Fed- 

eration of Labor, November 12, 1917. 
20*. A War Message to the Farmer. By President Wilson. 

205. Plain Issues of the War. By Elihu Root, Ex-Secretary of State. 

206. Ways to Serve the Nation. A Proclamation by the President, April 16, 

1917. 

207. What Really Matters. By a well-known newspaper writer. 

(Other issues in preparation.) 

IV. OFFICIAL BULLETIN (Published Daily) 

Accurate daily statements of what all agencies of Government are doing in 
war times, sent free to newspapers and postmasters (to be put on bulletin 
boards). Subscription price, $5 per year. 



A rl j-j rpoo • 

COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC INFORMATION, 
10 Jackson Place, 

Washington, D. C. 



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